The Tiger's Wife by Téa Obreht

Filled with astonishing immediacy and presence, fleshed out with detail that seems firsthand, “The Tiger’s Wife” is all the more remarkable for being the product not of observation but of imagination.
-NY Times

In a Balkan country mending from war, Natalia, a young doctor, is compelled to unravel the mysterious circumstances surrounding her beloved grandfather’s recent death. Searching for clues, she turns to his worn copy of The Jungle Bookand the stories he told her of his encounters over the years with “the deathless man.” But most extraordinary of all is the story her grandfather never told her—the legend of the tiger’s wife.

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Téa Obreht was born in Belgrade in the former Yugoslavia in 1985 and has lived in the United States since the age of twelve. Her writing has been published in The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Harper's, and The Guardian, and has been anthologized in The Best American Short Stories and The Best American Nonrequired Reading. She has been named by The New Yorker as one of the twenty best American fiction writers under forty and included in the National Book Foundation's list of 5 Under 35. Téa Obreht lives in New York.

AV Club

Reviewed by Samantha Nelson
on
Mar 31 2011

...provides a deeper look at the less obvious effects of war, like teens
turning contraband imports into status symbols, groups of people
defiantly spending all night in coffee houses while air-raid sirens
blare, and zoo animals killing themselves and each other as they succumb
to unbearable stress.

Dallas News

Reviewed by Alan Cheuse
on
Mar 18 2011

a remarkable debut novel. Tea Obreht uses stories, and stories within stories... and does so with with a mature hand, predicating certainty and strength in her grasp of materials we usually expect from a master far beyond Obreht’s years.

Oregon Live

Oprah.com

Reviewed by Stephan Lee

In Obreht's expert hands, the novel's mythology, while rooted in a foreign world, comes to be somehow familiar, like the dark fairy tales of our own youth, the kind that spooked us into reading them again and again.

The Rumpus

BookRack

Reviewed by Jyoti Babel
on
Dec 17 2011

It is complex, multi layered and has fable and reality intricately woven. The writing style is mature, seasoned and polished. It allures you to delve deeper in the story and visualize the scenes in your mind.

National Post arts

Reviewed by Sarah Weinman
on
Mar 04 2011

The Tiger’s Wife never lets us forget that stories have the ability to transcend all manner of reality, whether it teeters on depression or reaches ecstatic heights. Like any good sorcerer, the spell Obreht casts is strong enough to circumvent flaws...

S. Krishna's Books

Reviewed by Swapna Krishna
on
Apr 11 2011

Tea Obreht’s writing is beautiful and clear... the reader must linger over each [word] in order to truly absorb the novel’s impact. Obreht writes with a confidence usually reserved for the most seasoned of writers.

From Left to Write

Reviewed by Taylor Usry
on
Mar 21 2012

I was immediately drawn in by Obreht’s lyrical writing style, her thought-provoking passages, her rich portrayal of the landscape that surrounded her interesting characters, and the way she wove several stories together.

Whirl Books

Reviewed by Liz
on
Mar 24 2011

I felt like I was missing a lot by not understanding what I assumed were many references--cultural, folkloric, religious, and otherwise. So I stumbled around the maze and emerged dazed, and ultimately a little disappointed.